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Watery Dwarf

Featured on May 2, 2014

Water vapor appears to be surrounding Ceres, the largest asteroid and one of several dwarf planets in the solar system (artist's concept, left). Sunlight may vaporize some of the ice at its surface, or water may squirt from a subsurface lake or ocean. The Dawn spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at Ceres (shows in a Hubble Space Telescope image, right) in early 2015, so it may be able to resolve the water's origin. [Left: ESA/ATG medialab; Right: NASA/ESA/SWRI/Cornell/Univ. Maryland/STScI]